New space Junk?

[Loosehead]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7254 540.stm
obviously many people more clued up than me decided that this was the best solution but surely now we have thousands of bits of debris orbiting the earth causing danger for future missions. Can anyone explain why this was the best solution? Could they for example not have somehow got it to renenter and burn up?

[daffy654]

They said on BBC Breakfast that the junk would mostly burn up on re-entry to the earth's atmosphere.

[youngmafbog]

i guess smaller pieces will burn up. Biggest point is to prove to Chinese West can also hit a difficult target in space.

[jake-the-peg]

This was the best solution because the Chinese shot down a satellite last year

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/01/18/c hina.missile/index.html

Come on stay with the program!

You don't actually believe all that tosh about cleaning up space do you?

This is a cover story to provide a fig leaf of deniability about space based weapons whilst still playing anything you can do with the Chinse

[Beswad]

Bah! It's all about flexing their power.

China wants to show America they have the capability to shoot down a satellite, for trying to surpress their economic growth, Taiwan issues and their reasonable suspicion that America is spying on them.

Now the American is just showing they too is capable.